While giant UK retailer Tesco is following NFC and contactless payment “intensively” and continues to trial contactless acceptance in more than 30 stores, it has not yet committed to rolling out the technology, in part because of security concerns among customers, said one of Tesco’s mobile chiefs.
Frans Falize, international director of dotcom for Tesco PLC, ranked as the third largest retailer worldwide by revenue, said the company is still trialing acceptance of contactless cards and potentially NFC phones running Visa payWave and MasterCard PayPass applications in a total of 34 stores in the UK. The merchant launched the trial in its first stores a couple of years ago.
“The judges are still out on this from our end,” said Falize, speaking at the recent EFMA 2012 mobile and advanced payments conference in Paris. “So NFC, we’re still waiting to see how it develops. But clearly, it’s something we are fairly interested in, following intensively and trialing in certain stores to understand how we can make it better for our customers.”
